Hi, all.

By now, all of the forum regulars should know about my ongoing broadband problems. Well, I have got somewhere but it isn't where I wanted to be. Since around last September (longer than I had originally thought) my broadband was unreliable at specific time frames during the day and matters were brought to a head recently when I switched to an Orange Livebox and lost connection every evening.

I got onto Orange and it is now more reliable but my speed has been dropped from 1MB (which it has been for some years) to 960Mb and Speedtest gives consistent results of around 750Mb.

When I fought and fought to have ADSL, (long story) BT told me that I could only have 512Mb and once I had finally got this out of them, they let the whole area have it and then upped it to 1Mb. Recently, I was told by BT that I could now have 3Mb (with BT as my ISP) and I told Orange to shove it. Orange then gave me a VERY generous offer to stay, so I did.

I told them that I was supposed to be able to get 3Mb and they were looking into it, but now that my ADSL is stable at 960Mb, I get the feeling that this is going nowhere. I want reliablility more than outright speed, but I had 1Mb for a few years and now I don't even have that.

I have had experience of contacting BT Wholesale directly, which is how I managed to get ADSL in the first place but I can't contact BT the services retailer as they are not my ISP. Orange don't seem interested in helping me up my speed even to what I used to have.

I am happy enough now to have a stable service, but it is still lagging at times. Last night I had a ping of over 1 second. Is there anything I can do that does not involve me speaking to Orange, bearing in mind that they charge for their support.

I will look- perhaps I should have started looking instead of posting here, but I was interested in hearing from others who have had to take matters further than their ISP.

Ta.

You know what I feel like so I'm very, very sorry for you. I too am having an ongoing ISP war.

Have you tried writing to someone higher up in Orange? You don't ever want to phone tech support with a matter like this because the likelihood is (I speak from experience with 3) you'll just get some idiot that tells you there's nothing wrong. You may not do but I wouldn't take the risk considering the stupid costs of tech support phone calls. Write or email someone higher in the customer service department and tell them about how rubbish their company is . Joke - by the way, don't do that. Write a polite and well put together argument with evidence for all the points you make and maybe they'll listen.

Also, 96% of the advertised "up to" speed isn't bad at all. The ping of over a second however, is very bad.

Some small development in as much as an email has just arrived with details of how to access my on-line statement and it includes a UK customer service address. As soon as I get the time, I will get together all of the details of all e-mails I have sent and records of speed, errors etc. and send them off.